


Love and Other Immovable Objects

by marauder_in_warblerland



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic), Glee
Genre: Blatant misuse of the Bard, Coming Out, Crossover, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-10
Updated: 2016-06-28
Packaged: 2018-07-14 05:14:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 19,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7155161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marauder_in_warblerland/pseuds/marauder_in_warblerland
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Blaine didn’t make friends with his students. That was his rule. As it turned out, his exception was small and blond and spent most of the third class of the semester asleep in the second row.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to @stultiloquentia and @iaminarage for being unparalleled betas and sounding boards! This fic wouldn’t be half of what it became without your help. <3
> 
> This is, by and large, a silly romp, but do see the end notes for potential content warnings.

As a rule, Blaine didn’t make friends with his students.

Of course, he was friendly. He couldn’t help that, but he didn’t go out of his way to include his students in his social life. It didn’t seem healthy, particularly as a new professor. Sure, he was welcome to have a small class over for a potluck at the end of the semester, but even Samwell didn’t want their professors hanging out with undergrads. Thus, Blaine’s rule, but every rule had its exceptions.

It turned out his exception was small and blond and spent most of the third class of the semester asleep in the second row.

Usually Blaine wouldn’t stand for that sort of thing. Students who fell asleep in lecture got called out by name or, better yet, hit with a dry erase marker from several paces away. Once, he got an obviously hung-over bro to fall right out of his chair and it was _fantastic_ , but usually the sleeping student wasn’t Eric Bittle. It wasn’t that Eric was a particularly good student. He really wasn’t. His first short paper looked like it’d been written on sugar and fumes, but Eric was always smiling his face off in class, even when the rest of the room looked bored out of their skulls. In a class like “Queer in the Pictures: Comics and Film since the 1940s,” a little enthusiasm went a long way, so Blaine was willing to give Eric a little leeway. Plus, the guys around him were already having enough fun at his expense. Justin and Adam, in the second row, might have been recording Bittle’s sniffles in his sleep.

Eric jolted awake five minutes before the end of lecture with a jump that left the whole class pretending not to stare. In seconds, he flushed down to his collar and he spent the rest of the period slouched low. Blaine didn’t blame him. There were offenses that couldn’t be ignored, but dreaming in class was pretty much its own punishment.

Once the rest of the class finally got up to leave, Eric shuffled up to the lectern, his hands fluttering around his face like nervous moths. “Oh Lord, Professor Anderson. I am so sorry!” The boy looked bone-tired and positively ill with self-recrimination. “I don’t know how I could have let myself nod off like that, but I promise it won’t happen again. My mama didn’t raise me to be disrespectful and you have to know that I _love this class_.”

Blaine believed him, and not just because his eyes were bigger than dinner plates “I know. I know. It’s okay. Really.” Blaine gestured to an open chair, because the kid looked like he might actually be sick, but Eric Bittle was not about to stop for man, woman, or Professor.

“You say that,” he said with conviction, “but it’s not okay! I shouldn’t be distracting the class. That’s not why I’m here. They all have to pay attention if they’re going to learn about Midnighter and Madam Xanadu. Goodness, I know I pulled focus.”

“It wasn’t really that distracting.” Blaine shrugged and Eric’s eyebrows shot to the ceiling like bullets. Blaine’s first thought was that Kurt would have been impressed. Not many underclassmen could manage a deadpan _oh really?_ with such flair. “Okay, so it was distracting,” he admitted, “but just when you snored.” And the drooling, but Blaine wasn’t going to mention that.

“Oh sweet Jesus,” Bittle moaned into his hands.

“Eric?” Blaine glanced toward the hallway where he could already hear new voices at the door. “I meant it when I said it wasn’t a problem. You don’t have to make me feel better or make me forgive you, but—excuse me if I’m wrong—it sounds like you might really be trying to make yourself feel better.” He ducked his head, trying to catch Eric’s eye. “I’ve got an ear ready and waiting if you need it.”

He put on his most accepting face and waited until Eric finally peeked out from behind his hands. For one, long pause he looked like might be considering Blaine’s offer. He had one hand pressed to his lips and, behind the exhaustion, his features were tense with indecision. Finally he sighed and averted his eyes. “That’s just about the sweetest thing a professor’s ever said to me, but I’m fine. Really, I—” he paused and gave a tight smile. “I’ll see you later, Dr. A.”

He turned and was out the door before Blaine could do more than hold up his hand in an stilted wave. Eric never even looked back. He and his backpack disappeared into the hallway and, before Blaine could gather his things, the next class full of students came rushing in.

—

The next day, Blaine was finishing up absolutely nothing when he heard a knock on his office door. He should have been working on a book review for GLQ or polishing a submission for _The Comics Grid_ or researching the class on comics and the medical humanities that he was hoping to propose for the following year, but he’d gotten distracted by the idea channel on Youtube and his actual work didn’t stand a chance. He was five minutes into a twelve-minute video on whether Ron was really Dumbledore when he heard the knock and just managed to turn off the video before Eric Bittle tentatively opened the door.

“Excuse me, Professor?” Eric peeked inside, his eyes wide and apologetic. “Do you have a minute? I don’t mean to interrupt.”

“Oh, you’re not interrupting anything,” Blaine said quickly, and if Eric’s thankful nod was any indication, he had no idea how true that was. “Come on in. How can I help you, Eric?” He waved toward one of the two empty seats in front of his desk, and as he came around to sit in the other, he realized Eric hadn’t come empty handed. In his arms he held what had to be the most beautiful pie Blaine had ever seen.

After thirteen-odd years with Kurt, Blaine knew his baked goods, and he wasn’t a slouch in the kitchen himself, but this was on a level all its own. The filling smelled of berries and caramelized sugar, but the real art was in the crust. The baker had forgone the usual lattice top in favor of a floral design that Blaine wasn’t sure he could recreate with paper and pen, let alone raw dough. There were little leaves, stalks, and blossoms all coiled around the top, like a dance in butter and flour.

“Oh my god.” He stared at the creation and watched as Eric’s concern bloomed into a grin. “Did you make that?”

“Of course I did,” Eric said as he carefully set the pie in Blaine’s hands and settled into the empty chair. “I’m not about to thank you for your kindness with some monstrosity from the Stop&Shop. I know you said it was fine, but I also know you didn’t have to be so generous about my addition to your lecture. Plus, I really wanted an excuse to try out that crust.” He pointed to the latticework and smiled. “The boys at the Haus never appreciate the work that goes into the details.”

“Well I do,” Blaine said with open admiration. “Eric, this is—wow. If it didn’t smell so good, I’m not sure I’d be able to eat it.” As he spoke, Eric bit his lip with irrepressible glee. He also didn’t look like he was getting ready to go anywhere anytime soon, so Blaine took a chance. “I sure hope this isn’t why you were so tired in class yesterday.” It wasn’t that he wanted to pressure Eric into talking, but he had come back and he still had the fidgety look of a man who, if given the chance, could talk for _days_.

Eric squirmed. “No, although certain people tell me I could have better grades if I didn’t spend so much time baking. That’s like saying Holster could get better grades if he stopped watching TV or Chowder could get better grades if he stopped living and breathing for the Sharks. There’s no point in knowing about it if it’s never going to happen.”

He shrugged as if his point couldn’t be more obvious, and Blaine supposed it was. He didn’t need to know who Holster or Chowder were to know that baking wasn’t Eric’s problem. The baking just _was._ He waited as Eric found his words. “I really am fine, like I said. I’m just a little—well, you know. I’m tired.” He glanced up from where he was wringing his hands in his lap, and Blaine nodded.

“Tough classes?”

Eric snorted. “Thank the lord, no. It’s not like that.” He took a deep breath and sighed. “Y’see, I’ve got this _friend_.” Bittle said the word with such exasperated fondness that he could have stopped right there and Blaine would have gotten the picture. “Anyway, he graduated in the spring, and we’ve been trying to keep in touch, but that was a whole lot easier in the summer. Back in June, I could stay up talking until all hours of the night, and I never had to worry about turning into the undead for my first class the next morning.”

Blaine stared at him. His class on comics and film was at one fifty in the afternoon.

Eric rolled his eyes. “Yes. I know. If you thought that class was bad, you should have seen me yesterday at nine a.m. I hadn’t had caffeine and was just about delirious. When I was leaving my last class I lost my bearings, and Holster said it was like watching Bambi run into a tractor.”

Blaine didn’t know what that meant, but it couldn’t have been good. “So, you’ve been staying up late to talk to your _friend_.”

Eric nodded slowly. “He likes Skype. I mean, we both like Skype. It means I get to see his face, but it isn’t the same as having him here, you know?”

“I do,” Blaine said and hoped it sounded like more than empty sympathy. He knew. Boy, did he ever know. He’d never actually been able to see his own face when Kurt went off to college, but between phone calls and texts and Skype calls, he must have looked something like Eric did now, lost between the absence and the rest of his life. Sometimes loving Kurt from a distance was like loving the gap where a person was supposed to be. “Long-distance relationships suck, don’t they? I’ve been there, a few times, in fact. My husband and I started college different years, and then there were my first years of graduate school. Back then, I had to be in school and he had to be somewhere that a brilliant playwright could get noticed. We’d been together for years and it was still so difficult.”

He put extra emphasis on the word _husband_ and watched as Eric’s eyes slowly went wide. Somehow, the fact that Blaine taught about queer superheroes at Samwell wasn’t enough to put this boy at ease, and that was just impossibly sad. He smiled softly. “I’m so sorry you have to go through that with your friend, but I’m sure you’ll handle it better than I did.” He could smile now, because he was no longer a seventeen-year-old disaster zone. “Is it new?”

“The friend?” Eric rubbed his eyes and pushed his hands through his hair. He still had the look of a man who needed a good, long nap, but that was a step up from yesterday, when he'd had the air of a scared rabbit. “No, it’s not—I mean the friendship isn’t new, but the rest—The, I don’t know, the _boyfriend_ part still feels new. We’ve been together since May, but I could swear he swept me off my feet last night.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be telling you all about my business when you probably have work to do, but I haven’t been able to talk about him much.”

“And he’s all you want to talk about?”

“My goodness, _yes_!” Eric threw up his hands and Blaine tried not to laugh. “I completely and totally understand why we can’t talk about it. There are logical reasons and he is so worth it. You have no idea. Some days, though, it doesn’t feel right to keep something this good under a bushel. We are _delightful_.”

“I’m sure you are,” Blaine said, and he meant it.

“Is your husband—I mean—” Eric scooted back in his seat, his eyes skittish, and Blaine nodded him on. “Does he live here now? Of course, that’s a silly question, he would have to live here now if you’re married—”

Blaine held up a hand, endeared. “It’s not a silly question. I know professors who have to work in different cities, and that’s an entirely different mess. Yes, he lives here. We’re lucky. He actually won a grant a few years ago and it made everything much simpler. I won’t bore you with the details, but the grant he got is a big deal for playwrights and it means we can be in the same place while he works.” He reached for the picture of the two of them on his desk and tried not to sound disgustingly proud. “I know it’s not always going to be like that. Someday soon, I’m sure he’ll have to be back in New York, but we get better at the distance every single time. Skype really is an amazing thing.”

"Yeah, it is.” Eric’s voice still had a tinge of sadness around the edges that made Blaine want to give him the biggest hug, but as he looked up from his hands there was something in his eyes that looked more like hope.

——

The adventures of Blaine and his new student-friend should have ended there. He should have gone to class the following Monday and teased Eric during the introduction to the next lecture. He could have said, “It’s good to see that everyone has their eyes open for today’s class,” and let that be the final act of the story.

But then again, Kurt’s bake sale shouldn’t have gone to hell in a hand basket.

The day after the pie of wonder appeared on Blaine’s desk, he came home from work to find Kurt pacing the kitchen floor, a rolling pin smacking his hand with every step.

“We’re done,” he declared. “This is officially the final nail in the coffin. Finished. Our dearest Mrs. Maria Von Schweppenburg has finally found the only perfect, fool-proof way to put an entirely company of children out of business. Children, Blaine. She might as well be starving Tiny Tim. That’s how bad it is. I’m Bob Cratchet and she’s Ebenezer Scrooge without the friendly ghosts.”

“Kurt?”

“Do you think she was born without a soul? Is that actually possible or do you think she had her soul surgically removed in her annual pilgrimage to the _asscrack of hell_?”

“Kurt!” Blaine dropped his bag on the table and Kurt finally stopped pacing. Instead, he crossed his arms over his chest and glared at the ceiling in thin-lipped rage. Blaine lowered his voice. “I don’t understand what’s going on right now, but I can see that you’re upset. Can you start again from the beginning?”

Of course, he had a pretty good idea of what was going on, but that didn’t mean Kurt couldn’t use an opportunity to talk it out from start to finish. Everything that Blaine had told Eric was true. Kurt had won an obscenely prestigious grant, which gave him carte blanche to spend his days writing and eating bonbons, but he was still Kurt Hummel. After three days of open, unstructured writing time, he’d gone online and volunteered to work with an intrepid little Young Players Shakespeare Theater filled with equally intrepid young thespians. Like most of their projects, it began as a hobby, but by the end of the year he was running everything from costumes to the renovations on the amphitheater out back. The entire company was eager as hell, but they were also constantly on the verge of running out of everything: time, actors, space, and most of all, money. They’d almost lost their key sponsors two years prior when the head of a more established, mostly adult, company got wind that Kurt was trying to stage the first all-male production of _Twelfth Night_ with an entire cast under the age of sixteen. She'd never said it in so many words, but her vitriol had made it clear that she thought the idea was disgusting, offensive, and (most of all) really, really gay.

“It’s Shakespeare! It doesn’t matter how I cast him,” Kurt had said at the time. “He’s always _really, really gay_.” Blaine had considered correcting him. Using the term “gay” for an early-modern playwright was at best anachronistic, and, if anything, he was bi, but Kurt hadn’t really been in the mood for nuance.

Blaine couldn’t blame him. Long after _Twelfth Night_ became a distant memory, Mrs. Von Schweppenburg had Kurt’s theater in her crosshairs, and it was taking everything he had just to keep a few loyal sponsors on his side. She was tireless and her family had lived in Samwell for generations. As long as she never explicitly said she objected to “LGTB content”—“meaning me,” Kurt groused—local businesses could ignore the fact that she was a homophobic troll and focus on her sway with the Better Business Bureau. Two years earlier, Kurt had fought his way back into the black and the slump in his shoulders suggested that he wasn’t sure he could do it again.

“ . . . and she took away my bakers,” Kurt finished. Blaine had never seen him look so tired. “She called them all up, every parent and teacher who promised to be there next Saturday, and convinced them it wasn’t worth the effort. She got our herd of helicopter parents to give up on _our theater_ , and I just don’t think I can bear to let those kids know the sale is cancelled. They aren’t stupid, Blaine. They know exactly how much we need this to stay afloat and I’m just about out of ideas. That woman doesn’t need a nemesis; she needs an exorcist. I—” He blinked up at the ceiling, the corners of his eyes wet and shining. “Blaine, if I have to stay up for the next seventy-two hours making sugar cookies, I will do it. You know I will. If I give up on the last scrap of my dignity, I might even get Rachel to drive here and bake them with me.”

“Oh, God no.”

“I know,” Kurt said, tightly. Rachel’s cooking wasn’t a laughing matter. “But I don’t know what else to do.”

Blaine wanted to kill her. He wanted to drive over to her McMansion in the suburbs and tear her limb from limb. She’d done horrible, spiteful things to his husband over the years, but nothing had left Kurt looking so ready to throw in the towel. This wasn’t a man who knew how to give up; he fought, and if he couldn’t then he got someone to get in the ring and fight for him. In his heart of hearts, Blaine wanted to make Mrs. Von Schweppenburg disappear, but as he gave Kurt a drink and rubbed his back, he decided he could do something even better.

That night, Blaine emailed Eric Bittle.


	2. Chapter 2

The following evening, Kurt eyed Faber Memorial Rink with trepidation.

“You were serious,” he said slowly, as students filed in the double doors. “We’re actually going to a hockey game. I have to decide if I’m going to cancel the biggest fundraiser of my young life and you’re taking me see a bunch of jocks hit each other with sticks.” He turned, his eyebrows almost to his hairline. “I love you, but if this is a joke, we’re really going to have work on your ability to read the room.”

Blaine smiled and hustled him toward the ticket line. “I wouldn’t dream of joking about a bake sale; I’m not a monster. Believe it or not, these jocks might just be the solution we’re looking for.” Of course, Blaine deeply and sincerely hoped he was right.

The previous day, Eric had answered his email almost instantly. It was impressive, and, to be quite honest, Blaine had never realized that even a baker of Eric Bittle’s caliber could have so much enthusiasm for a bake sale. Blaine hadn’t taken the time to get into the theater or the Von Schweppenburg issue in his original email, but Eric had clearly looked it all up on his own. Most of their battles had been painfully, brutally public, so Eric could get everything he needed to know from a well-designed Google search. Within the hour, he’d responded with four paragraphs of ideas for how he could “whip that sale into shape like a fussy meringue.” He even said he could bring his “team” to help get the job done. Apparently, he needed his team.

That was just fine; the more the merrier, but Blaine hadn't realized Eric was being quite so _literal_. He'd thought Eric had a few baking buddies who would be ready to help in a pinch, but until the next email—when Eric suggested coming to the game—Blaine hadn't realized that his new collaborator had an actual team full of hockey players ready to save the Young Players Shakespeare Theater from imminent ruin.

Yes, _really._

Not only were they ready, but according to the emails, they were also eager. Eric wasn’t too specific, but apparently there had been an incident of homophobic harassment at another NCAA game. It hadn’t been at Samwell and the SMH team wasn’t even involved, but the entire league was in a PR code-red. So, as Eric put it, “my team would have helped anyway, but now the coaches will let us make it official!”

Blaine had squinted at his computer screen. He wasn’t sure what official baking help from a team of hockey players looked like, and he wasn’t entirely sure if Kurt would want it. He’d tried explaining the idea and it still sounded ridiculous when he said it out loud. He’d had other hockey players in his classes and they were perfectly nice, responsible guys. Adam Birkholtz and Justin Oluransi were right there in the comics class with Eric, and he’d never had any problems, but they didn’t strike him as a group that knew the first thing about fondant or marshmallow cream. If he were holding a cooking competition based on beer and sriracha, they might be on the call list, but even then he wouldn’t get them on the phone until he’d exhausted the men’s lacrosse guys and the women’s rugby team. Still, as Blaine paid for his tickets and led Kurt into the stadium, he decided he wasn’t going to second guess the artist who could make that miraculous pie. That man had to have good ideas. He knew things.

Fifteen minutes into play, Kurt still couldn’t see what it had to do with his sale, but he was starting to get into the game. They both were. Neither Kurt nor Blaine knew the first thing about NCAA hockey—it hadn’t really been a priority when they were undergrads—but Kurt had come prepared. He’d asked Burt for an idiot’s guide to the game and Santana had provided information without any prompting whatsoever. They still couldn’t understand out how she could have figured they were going to a game, short of hacking their emails. That was certainly plausible, but it still sounded like a lot of work to read his mom’s mass emails and sappy messages sent when they were in boring meetings.

Regardless of how she got her intelligence, Kurt received a _painfully_ detailed message the morning of the game, which included descriptions of slashing, butt-ending, and Santana’s RPF fic about Kacey Bellamy. The information might not have been welcome, but it was useful. By the end of the first period, they knew enough to get excited with the crowd, and Blaine was, quite frankly, in awe. On the one hand, the game looked like incredibly hard work. The players had to find one another on the ice and get points on a tiny goal while avoiding the giant humans trying to mash each other into the sides of the rink. At the same time, Eric was easy to pick out of the crowd and he made it look so easy. He wasn’t exactly skating circles around his teammates, but his game had a certain grace.

After one notable run toward the goal, Kurt whistled under his breath. “That’s him?”

Blaine just nodded and smiled when Kurt whistled again. It was always a pleasure to see other artists in action.

—

After the game, they lingered awkwardly near the locker room. Eric had asked them to stop by, since that was probably the best way to meet the guys en masse, but that didn’t mean Blaine knew what to say.

_Hi, you might not know me, but I want you to bake cookies for my husband?_

His pitch needed some work and Kurt wasn’t any help. “Shouldn’t you be more comfortable here?” Blaine asked his husband, who somehow managed to look even twitchier than he did. “You were a football player! You lived with jocks your entire life. This shouldn’t be _that_ different.”

“Oh sure, Mr. All-American-Boy,” Kurt hissed and pressed his back against the wall. “My five minutes on the football team definitely wasn’t cancelled out by a million years of being harassed by jocks. Plus,” he said with an arch smile, “Only one of us dated a jock. That should give you the real edge.”

Blaine gave a tiny salute. “Touché.”

He was just thinking about ways to give Kurt grief for bringing up Dave when the door to the locker room opened with a slam. He looked up and it wasn’t Eric Bittle. Of course it wasn’t Eric. Why had he assumed Eric would come out first like a little ambassador for the rest of the team? That didn’t make any sense. But now four very large members of the Samwell Men’s Hockey Team were coming at him like arrows at a target and—was that Adam?

“My man, you came to the game for real!” Adam Birkholtz had his arm slung around Justin Oluransi’s neck, and they both lit up like giant Christmas trees. “Guys! Get over here! This is the prof Bitty was talking about!”

“Hey, Professor Anderson. Glad you could come.” Justin held out his fist and Blaine bumped it with an awkward smile. When he'd imagined meeting the team, he hadn’t factored in how large they’d all be, or how _energetic_.

Already, a third player was bounding at him with a look on his face that was less excited and more gobsmacked. “This is him?!” The kid asked, as Justin and Adam nodded in unison. “Wow. WOW. Hi Mr. Anderson. I mean, Professor. Professor Anderson. I hear your class is, like, totally ‘swawesome. Do you really talk about superheroes for the whole class? That’s . . . _amazing._ I know you need a really good bake sale and I promise we won’t let you down!! We have dedication, especially when Bitty needs us. Are you Mr. Professor Anderson’s husband?” He turned to Kurt, his hand already out, and he might have kept talking if another guy behind him hadn’t set a hand on his shoulder.

“Whoa, Chowder. Chill. Let the man breathe.” He nodded over the first kid’s shoulder, like getting mobbed in hallways was the most normal thing in the world. “Derek Nurse, or Nursey. It’s all good. I was looking forward to taking your American Lit class next semester, but I guess we’re going to be working on pies first.” He shrugged. “Very cool.”

The first kid (Chowder? Was that a name?) was still staring wide-eyed at Blaine and Kurt, like they might disappear at any second, and new players just kept appearing around the margins. A guy with red hair started yelling at the Nursey kid, and a tiny student in a beanie waved from the side, a little smile on her face, like they were going to be her entertainment for a year. Blaine was just about to make a break for it when Eric’s voice cut through the din.

“Gentlemen, back away! My Lord, were you raised in a barn?” Eric pushed his way through the crush and landed in front of Blaine with game-wrecked hair and eyes full of joy. “Welcome to the zoo, Professor Anderson. I swear I’ve been training them up for two years now, but the powers of a good routine only go so far. You understand.”

Blaine did not understand, but anyone paying attention could tell that Eric (or was it Bitty?) had his very own mob of hockey players ready to do his bidding.

Blaine was going to ask all the questions, but Bittle had already moved on. “You must be the husband. I’m Eric, but my friends call me Bitty.” He waved at Kurt, his other hand at his chest, and Kurt waved back. Given the look on Kurt’s face, he might as well have just watched a new episode of _Fondue for Two_ in Spanish. Bitty must have been used to that look. “Professor Anderson explained that you’re an accomplished baker in your own right, so I don’t want to step on any toes. This is your rodeo, but I would like offer our services however and whenever they might be of use. If you need a show to run on time and look impeccable, Lardo’s on it.”

The woman at the side of the crowd shrugged, but not like she was about to disagree.

Bitty went on. “Ransom’s got powers with Excel that, honestly, make me weak in the knees, and Holster could probably sell water to a mermaid, so you can just take your pick. Plus, not to toot my own horn, but I once made sixty-five mini-pies in a single weekend without losing my beauty rest.”

“For real, bro,” Adam nodded. “If you get him a direct line to the new Beyoncé album, he could probably clear this city out of butter. The baking game is strong with this one.”

“Mini-pies?” Kurt perked up at Blaine’s side. “I don’t think I even had anyone signed up to make those before the whole volunteer debacle. All the parents said they took too much time.”

Bitty scoffed. “Amateurs. It just takes a little repetition and the whole process becomes second nature.” He smiled. “Stop me if you’ve already got a line-up in mind, but there’s a hot list that you just have to have at any bake sale worth its salt. I’m thinking moon pies, donut holes, cake pops, blueberry muffins, frosted brownies, and at least three kinds of cupcakes. Anything less, you’re basically throwing an all-star concert without Bruno Mars. Plus, I’ve got a recipe for ganache-stuffed chocolate chip cookies that I’ve been just dying to try.”

“Bits, you’ve been holding out on us,” Ransom gasped.

“Dude. No joke. I am OFFENDED.”

A kid in the back raised his hand. “Didn’t I see you putting a batch of cookies in the mail? Who gets cookies in Providence?”

Bitty blushed, but Kurt was starting to look interested. “To be honest, I haven’t been able to decide on just one brownie recipe. I keep trying things out, like some kind of baking dilettante,” Kurt admitted and, well, Blaine didn’t even know that. “Where did you get yours?”

Bitty leaned in with a conspiratorial smile. “I’d like to say it was from my MooMaw. She’s probably got spies listening as we speak. I’d be lying, though, if I didn’t say that almost every recipe I try is at least half from the _Smitten Kitchen_ blog. Hand to my heart, I have it bookmarked fifteen times.”

“Me too!” Kurt gasped. “The woman who runs that website must be descended from the gods. I’d choose to meet her before I met Patti LuPone, and that is saying so much.”

“Yes!” Bitty rose up on his toes like he was about to fly away. “The things she does with brown butter and chocolate, oh my Lord. I’m not exaggerating when I say that reading her blog is like going to church. She got me making galettes, of all things, and I would have sworn I was on team pie for life.”

Blaine watched happily as Kurt and Bitty’s conversation spun out into a celebration of salted caramel and crème fraiche and all manner of other delicacies he couldn’t properly appreciate. It was like seeing Bernadette Peters and Audra McDonald talk about Broadway, and the rest of the team’s collective confusion only made it that much sweeter.

“Guys?” Chowder raised a hand, like he needed to use the bathroom during class. “I’m sorry!! I have to go back to the Haus really soon. Holster said to expect half of the school to show up after the game and I have to, um—” he paused, as if suddenly aware he was still speaking to a professor. “I’m supposed to _prepare the Haus_ , but I want to help and I’m not sure if this is actually happening. It has to actually happen right?”

“Why?” Kurt asked, and then seemed almost surprised that he’d asked the question out loud. The team turned to look at him as he stammered, “I mean, I—we are more than grateful for your help. You all might not know the whole story, but this little theater has had a tough couple of years, but—if you don’t mind me asking—why are you so excited to help? I know my husband’s a good teacher and that it will be good PR for the team, but—”

“Bro, the arts matter,” Adam said, seriously. “Just because we get our creativity out on the ice doesn’t mean we can’t appreciate a good soliloquy. That shit is beyond.”

Justin jumped in when Adam took a breath, like they shared a brain. “Like, my little sister’s crazy into theater, and if anybody tried to take away her right to party with _Hamlet_ and _Richard III_ , I wouldn’t take that lying down. Why should your kids be any different?”

“Plus,” Derek said, “I hope it’s cool, but Bitty explained that the problem isn’t just about theater, you know?” He paused and waited for Kurt to nod. “So there we go. We don’t take that lying down either.”

Most of the team nodded seriously, like nothing else had ever occurred to them. Bitty looked like the proudest lil’ papa of an eighteen-person family, and if Kurt wanted to pretend he wasn’t a little choked up when he invited them all over for a planning party, Blaine could let him pretend.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hold on kids; here we go.

Kurt and Blaine didn’t have a small home. Or at least they hadn't thought so until they tried to stuff half of the Samwell Men’s hockey team into their living room. Thankfully, not everyone came. The plans were made with one day’s notice and, while they all cared about the cause, they weren’t all ready to give up their study time for someone else’s little theater. Bitty assured Kurt that the entire team would be there bright and early on Saturday, but on Monday night it was just what Adam—or _Holster_ —called their core boys. Holster and Ransom had taken over the loveseat—spreadsheets at the ready; Chowder, Dex, and Nursey were hovering around the kitchen table; Tango and Whiskey sat themselves on the floor, like good little freshmen; and Lardo had found a space right in the middle of the action with a laptop open and a very loud someone talking to all of them via Skype.

The someone called itself Shitty.

Blaine was still conflicted about the nicknames. On the one hand, he wanted to respect his students’ right to call themselves whatever they wanted. On the other hand, he wasn’t sure it was professional to just go with the flow. He couldn’t call a student Lardo with a straight face, and then this kid said his actual name was Shitty? In fact, the kid was quite adamant about it and wouldn’t give another name, so Blaine just had to run with it. The insistence might have been irritating if the guy on the computer hadn’t been so excited to meet _him_.

“Dude!” Shitty shouted. “I remember you! This is fucking ’swawesome! The department wouldn’t give me a straight answer about whether they actually hired you and I was just about to hightail it over to wherever you came from to find out for myself. Fuck YES.”

“Say that again?” Blaine peered into the screen as the guy pumped his fist and did a little butt dance in his chair.

“Bro, I came to your job talk and it blew my fucking mind! Not to cast aspersions on your colleagues, but I did not think they had the _huevos_ to hire someone who specialized in comics and queer aesthetics. I mean, Judith Butler is one thing, but going full-on Juana Maria Rodriguez and Eli Clare? DUDE. I am not ashamed to say that on that day I wanted to make beautiful love to your brain.”

“That’s Shitty speak for ‘you gave a good job talk.’ Congrats.” Lardo smirked.

“Oh.” Blaine pointedly did not look at Kurt, who was standing behind Lardo’s back and laughing into his hand. “Thank you?”

The thing was, if he really thought about it, he could remember Shitty. There hadn't been many undergrads at his talk back in February, and even fewer had had the gumption to ask questions. He couldn’t remember exactly what Shitty had said, but he definitely remembered that it was smarter and more on-point than all of the professors’ questions combined. At least Shitty hadn’t tried to make him talk about Derrida. His talk had nothing to do with Derrida. He found himself almost sad that he hadn’t gotten to actually have the guy in a class. At the very least, he would have been entertaining.

Blaine was lost in thoughts of an all-hockey team discussion of queer masculinity in _The_ _Fantastic Four_ when the doorbell rang for what felt like the hundredth time. When he turned around, Bitty was already coming in the door, and he wasn’t alone. Behind him was . . .Blaine’s brain stuttered. It was _someone_. Yes, of course, there was literally another human behind Bitty, but Blaine also got the sense the other person was someone he was supposed to recognize. He was tall, frighteningly in shape, and wearing Samwell gear like almost every guy in the room, but his face looked familiar. Blaine couldn’t place it, but then Bitty waved and the other guy looked up shyly from his shoes.

Jack Zimmermann. Blaine couldn’t tell where or how he’d remembered the name, but he wasn’t surprised he still remembered the face. The school had plastered his mug all over their fliers and paperwork when they were trying to get Blaine to accept their job offer, like this kid was supposed to be the ultimate carrot. At the time, Blaine had found it hilarious that anyone thought a sports star would be his deciding factor. He’d just wanted a job. He hadn’t cared if some famous hockey player, who was the son of another famous hockey player, had stopped off at Samwell before getting scooped up by the NHL. He wasn’t even going to be there anymore by the time Blaine started teaching.

Now Blaine was obscenely grateful that he wasn’t a big hockey fan, especially since the rest of the room hardly batted an eye. A few waved happily when Bitty and Jack dropped their things on the floor by Lardo’s feet, but for the most part, they treated Jack’s presence like the perfectly routine visit it probably was. He was just another former teammate, albeit one who made more in a year than Blaine’s entire department put together.

After leaving their things, Bitty made a beeline for Blaine with a grin the size of Texas. “Sorry I’m running late,” he said, beaming. “ _Someone_ had to take a million pictures after he arrived and threw my schedule all off kilter.” He elbowed Jack, who looked sheepish and pleased at the same time. “This is Jack,” Bitty said, and he paused to look Blaine right in the eye. “He’s my friend.”

Blaine smiled back and stuck out his hand before the emphasis hit home. His _friend_. This was Bitty’s friend who kept him up until all hours on Skype, who was kinda new, and whom no one else knew about. That friend. Blaine was proud when his voice stayed perfectly level. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Jack. I’m sorry to say I don’t know anything about hockey, but I have it on good authority that you’re delightful.”

“I—er—yes,” Jack said, quietly, and the very large, very accomplished hockey star blushed right down to his collar. “Thank you for talking to, er, Bittle when he needed it. I know it’s not always easy being on your own.” He looked back at Bitty, whose eyes had gone unbearably soft. Blaine wasn’t sure how everyone and their cats didn’t already know these two were gone on each other, but he supposed youthful obliviousness was a powerful thing.

“Luckily, it doesn’t seem like Eric’s on his own.” He looked out at the room full of teammates, but that wasn’t what he meant, and if Jack’s eyes were any indicator, he knew it. “He’s got a lot of good people looking out for him, but I’m glad I could be there to help.” He felt a pressure leaning against his shoulder and he didn’t have to look back. “This is my husband, Kurt. I think he and Bitty are going to be running the show.”

They all shook hands, and as Jack wandered off to find the bathroom, Kurt leaned into his ear.

“Is that him?”

Blaine nodded. “But don’t say anything, okay? Bitty would hate to think they’re that obvious.”

Kurt watched them walk away and when he looked back, his smile was a little sad. “Yeah,” he said. “I know.”

**————**

For a while, Kurt and Blaine just let the wall of sound in their living room grow organically. Blaine enjoyed getting to meet his students outside of class and he could tell Kurt loved the commotion, so they gave the guys and Lardo a little time to talk. Kurt brought out three different kinds of lemonade (to Chowder’s delight) and Blaine took pictures of the crowd enjoying each other’s company. He was finishing a wide-angle selfie of the room, with Shitty waving from the computer screen, when Kurt and Bitty finally called the meeting to order.

“Hey, y’all!” Bitty called from atop one of their kitchen chairs. “Give us your attention for a few minutes and I promise we’ll let you go back to socializing. Phones off. Eyes up here. We know what matters, but there’s the small issue of this bake sale. Who’s excited to save a theater?”

The group cheered and Kurt positively beamed.

It quickly became apparent that, between the two of them, they could probably organize three bake-sales and a silent auction in less than a week. As it was, Kurt going to be running a small theatrical production while Bitty surrounded it with enough baked goods to feed every branch of the armed forces. Since the coaches and the team higher-ups were on board, they had permission to really put the team to work, and Kurt was more than happy to oblige. The night before, just after the game, Blaine had heard him on speakerphone with Bitty, brainstorming all the ways the team could be involved, and they were so busy talking over each other that he wasn’t even sure who came up with the pièce de résistance: a show. The centerpiece of the event (besides a mind-boggling array of sweets) was going to be a series of little performances by both the little actors in Kurt’s troupe and the hockey players.

As Bitty put it, it didn’t matter if none of them could “act their way out of a paper bag.” They’d ham it up for the camera, and cameras would definitely be there if the SMH team was coming out to support an LGBTQ-affiliated theater. Now, if Jack had gotten involved too, the theater would get more publicity than they could handle, the team would look like good little PR soldiers for the school, and they would all get an excuse to do something together other than hockey and homework. Bitty was pleased as punch and Kurt could hardly calm down enough to sleep. All they needed was the manpower to make it happen, and they had a veritable army.

“Thank you to everyone who volunteered to be in the show,” Kurt called. “Blaine—or Professor Anderson, if you prefer—and I will be on hand to help you pick out your pieces.”

Shitty snorted, gently. “No need, _me campadre_. I was born ready to celebrate the bard. My body is ready.”

Ransom blinked down at the screen where Shitty had his arms out like Rose on the bridge of the Titanic. “No offense, dude, but don’t you have to be on the team to perform?”

“Isn’t being ‘on the team’ more of a state of mind?”

“Okay!” Kurt said, loudly. “Mr.—um— _Shitty_ , we’re all excited for whatever you’re going to do. Lardo?” She raised a hand just as Bitty checked his clipboard and pointed toward her. “We need you on design and execution. You plan the look of the space and then you make it happen. Essentially, you’re going to be the manager for the entire sale. Top to bottom.”

She gave a little smile and saluted from the couch. “Aye, aye, captains.”

Bitty jumped in over the noise, as though he and Kurt had their presentation choreographed to the word. Although, given the organizers in question, they probably did. “Rans, you’re on budget. Dex and Nursey, you’re on grocery runs. We’re looking for efficiency and speed. I know I’d usually be on social media, but I think I’m going to be a little busy. Holster’s got Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, and anything else you can think of. Feel free to interview Jack for sheer entertainment value.”

“Hey now. I interview fine.”

“Sure you do,” Bitty smiled. “Whiskey, do you want to handle Twitter?” A freshman on the floor casually waved his assent and turned to focus on his phone, eyes intent.

“Chowder,” Bitty went on. “You’re with me. I’m going to need an assistant so I don’t start throwing burnt pies out the window.”

“Wait, what?” Chowder looked up from his spot on the floor. “I can totally do that!!” He leaned over and whispered to Tango, “I’m going to be Bitty’s ASSISTANT. This is going to be the _best_.” Tango nodded, slowly, like he'd only followed half the words in Chowder’s last sentence.

Bitty was busy trying mighty hard to keep a straight face, so Kurt took over. “As you may know, the biggest battle is going to be on the day of the sale. We have the whole theater to ourselves starting at five-thirty a.m., but we have to be set up and ready to sell by ten a.m. Tango, you’re heading up the set-up team and you’re going to have to _move._ ”

“Um, I have questions.” Tango’s hand shot in the air from the floor. “That sounds good, but I’ve never done that and I have no idea how to do that.”

“Don’t worry, bro,” Holster said and patted him on the head. “Lardo’s really in charge. She decides where stuff goes and when it goes there. You’re just going to be her bitch.”

“My man,” Shitty called from the computer screen. “There’s never a good reason for a feminine-coded pejorative, but you’ve got my agreement with the sentiment. The tadpoles are in a fucking excellent pair of hands.”

Nursey shrugged. “He would know.”

“Bro,” Ransom hissed, “We don’t talk about that.”

Holster nodded. “For real. It’s like _Fight Club_.”

Lardo looked entirely too pleased with herself. Chowder looked at Lardo’s hands.

Meanwhile, Bitty pressed his lips together and Jack cracked up at his side. Blaine could hardly believe this group ever got to games in the first place, let alone actually remembered how to play. It was like someone took the McKinley High glee club at their most squirrelly and gave them all an excuse to wear shoes with blades. Then again, he thought, there had been that mostly-female football game before he transferred. Blaine thought about Rachel Berry bellowing encouragement and taking a dive in the middle of a football field. This was kind of like that.

When Tango started asking what was so special about Lardo’s hands, the meeting went completely off the rails and Bitty officially gave up. He gave everyone permission to go back to their social lives and the roomful of phones slowly pinged, rang, and beeped back to life. And they kept beeping. Bitty turned his phone on and Blaine could hear it dinging out notifications from across the room, one right after the other.

If it was possible, Kurt grinned even harder. “I— _Wow_. I don’t know what you guys did with social media, but the event Facebook page already has forty new RSVPs. That’s more than we got in the last three weeks! Oh,” he squeaked. “There’s another one!”

Holster stared down at his screen, eyes narrow. “Bro, I would love to take credit for the bonanza, but I didn’t do anything. When Bits says to turn off my phone? My phone is off.”

“Um. I tweeted,” Whiskey said, as his phone pinged in his hand. “But it was just a picture and a link to the Facebook page. I didn’t even link it to the team. Tango said I should ask about the hashtag.”

“Are we trending? Is Jack trending?”

“Dude, _Zimmboni’s_ always trending.”

“Oh no.”

Bitty’s hand flew up to his mouth and he sat down, hard. “Oh my. I— _Jack_.” He held up his phone and Jack went whiter than the walls. Rans punched him in the shoulder, a question in his eyes, but Jack just kept staring, wide-eyed, at Bitty’s phone.

Blaine looked too, like most of the room, but he couldn’t imagine what they were seeing. He found the tweet easily. It had already been shared by all of the unofficial Samwell accounts, usually with a mess of exclamation points. He couldn’t understand it, but he also couldn’t really understand why anything that Jack liked or retweeted suddenly _mattered_. It was just a picture of the room when everyone was milling around and finding their places. Sure, most of the people in the picture looked a little idiotic, in a casual-picture sort of way. The angle wasn’t flattering, but he couldn’t figure how that would hurt the cause. There was the sofa, right in the middle, and everyone arrayed on either side. There was Lardo and the computer, the guys standing around the kitchen table, the very tops of the freshmen’s heads on the floor, and in the far right corner of the picture there was— _oh_.

Blaine sucked in a breath.

_Oh no._

In the picture, Whiskey had just caught the hallway that led down to the bathroom. Once someone turned the corner, they weren’t visible from the door, but Kurt had put up a tall mirror just at the end of the living room at the entrance to the rest of the house. In its reflection, someone by the entryway could peek down the hallway and, if they looked closely, could just see Jack Zimmermann leaning down to cup Eric Bittle’s face in his hands. There they were, in the middle of a small, delicate kiss they had clearly assumed was private. They’d been tucked around the corner far enough that they couldn’t see anyone in the room and no one in the room could see them—except the man holding the camera.

 _Shit._ Blaine looked up. Everyone who wasn’t staring at their phones had turned to see the horror growing on Whiskey’s face. Blaine had exchanged maybe three words with the kid since they’d met, and to call him “low key” seemed like an understatement, but that was the face of a boy who’d forgotten how to breathe.

“I—” he said, and tried again. “I didn’t—”

Nursey nudged Whiskey's back as he trailed off, as he just hunched over a phone that wouldn’t stop beeping. “Man, we know.” Nursey shrugged. “We know.” He didn’t say it was okay. Anyone could look around the room—at Lardo’s fists and Jack’s stare—and know that nothing was okay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am SO sorry. I swear I love Whiskey.


	4. Chapter 4

Lardo was the first to kill the silence.

“Bits,” she asked quietly, “how long has it been?” No one needed to ask what she meant.

Bitty raised one finger. She nodded and the room waited as Bitty turned to where Jack was hunched over his phone, like a father over a sick child. He ducked his head and quietly brushed the hair away from Jack’s eyes until he looked up, took Bitty’s hand and let out a long, slow breath. Bitty didn’t ask any questions and Jack didn’t so much as nod, but Blaine knew what it was like to have entire conversations in a glance. He also knew what it was like to need them.

Finally, Bitty turned back to Lardo, but he kept ahold of Jack’s hand. “May. Since May,” he said, and swallowed hard. “It—it was right after graduation. I’m sorry we didn’t say anything, y’all—”

Shitty cut him off with a frustrated groan. “Goddammit Bitty, if you’re about to apologize for protecting our beautiful specimen of a former Captain, shit man, just stop. If anyone is going to begrudge your right to have a fucking life, you better believe I will personally tape their hands together and hang them out of the Haus by their ankles.” The rest of the room was nodding before Shitty even got to the tape. “Am I pissed that you had to tap that ass on the DL? Hells yes. That ass deserves to be tapped loud and proud.”

“Amen,” Holster added and Rans held his fist out for the bump. “Amen.”

“But, Jesus Christ, there is no way we are going to make you apologize for doing what you had to do to keep that gorgeous fucker safe.”

The rest of the room murmured their assent and slowly shifted toward Bitty and Jack’s side of the room. Nursey nudged Bitty’s shoulder and Chowder sat at his feet, wide-eyed and waiting. Jack’s eyes were still, but his thumb traced soft circles into Bitty’s palm. Eventually, Bitty sniffled out a soft “thank you.”

“Crap, dude. So no one else knows? Or, knew? I mean before the picture.” Ransom crossed his arms and peered at them, like the entire day was a problem he just had to solve.

“Not really,” Bitty said slowly, and the shock in his eyes suggested he was actively adding up all the people in his life who suddenly knew. “There was George. She knew, and Jack’s parents too.” That got a little smile. “I think they knew before I did. But nobody else.” He looked down at his empty right hand; Jack still had his phone . “Lord, I’m going to have to call my parents.”

“Bitty?” Tango raised his hand and then pulled it back down at his side. “It’s okay if the answer is no, but,” he paused and took a deep breath, “is it okay if we’re happy? For you, I mean? Is it cool if we’re happy that you’re happy? Of course, we’re not going to be happy about how we found out because that sucks, but—”

“Yes. Oh goodness, yes.” That time, Bitty smiled properly through the tears and Blaine realized he’d been tearing up too. “I’m—we’re happy for us and we wanted to share it with you for so long.” He shifted in his chair, his eyes suddenly lit with something like joy. “Holster, do you remember when you were trying to fix me up with that Ultimate Frisbee player from Austin? He was so sweet, and you were sure we’d be perfect together. I swear, I almost told you that weekend just to get you off of my back! You were so worried that I wasn’t going to have a nice boy in my life, and I wanted to just tell you that I was happy! I might have been spending too much time on Skype, but I was really, really good!”

As Bitty went on, Jack shifted uneasily in his seat and Blaine almost thought he might leave, until Bitty looked back at his fidgeting and laughed. “Look at you. This one hated that I had to keep quiet, and I couldn’t convince him that it was _fine_.”

Jack pulled their clasped hands closer, until Bitty was almost draped over the side of the sofa. “You shouldn’t have had to be quiet. You should have been able to dance about it, if you wanted to.” He talked about dancing like anyone else might have talked about skydiving; like it was perfectly nice in theory, but incomprehensible in practice.

Bitty just about melted onto the floor. “Oh, sweetheart, I wanted to dance,” he said quietly. “I could have danced down the aisle at church, but I chose to be quiet, for us.” His smile was soft, but his eyes were as serious as Blaine had ever seen. “Jack, honey, that was my choice to make. Thank you for letting me make it for myself.”

Jack frowned, but he was listening. “You’re welcome?”

“That’s right, mister,” Bitty said with a smirk, and waited for Jack to smile back before swatting him in the side. “Okay, now get up. If we don’t call George right this instant, she is going to see the tweet and track us down like wild game.” Blaine didn’t know who George was, but Jack didn’t look like he was about to disagree.

Kurt offered to let them use his study, so they could have a little privacy, and they disappeared back into the hallway still hand-in-hand. The door closed with a click and left behind a silence as thick as wool. Blaine hadn’t imagined that a team of hockey players could be so still. As big as some of them were, he forgot that they were all still basically kids, terrified for their friends. They might have grown up immersed in hockey gossip, but that didn’t mean they knew the first thing about what to do when their best friends were about to be thrown to the metaphorical wolves. It was all-new for them, but they weren’t alone.

“Okay ladies and gentlemen,” Kurt hopped up on a chair until he towered over the rest of the room. “I don’t know what a George is or how long they will be, but I think we’re on our own for a little while. It’s time to get to work.” He leaned over and gave the room his most serious stare. “Now, I need to know where we stand. Who here has seen _Scandal_?”

**\--------**

Of course Kurt was good in a crisis. No, Blaine corrected himself. Kurt was _excellent_.

This was the man who had single-handedly planned his parents’ wedding and a campaign for public office while he was still in high school. He’d had an internship with Vogue.com, while simultaneously holding down a job and taking on a full courseload at one of the most competitive performing arts schools in the world. Once, he'd managed to pack, transport, unpack, and redesign Blaine’s entire apartment in less than a weekend. When he wanted to be, Kurt Hummel was a machine, but Blaine didn’t have many opportunities to see how good Kurt could be with a team. These days, Kurt spent almost all of his time guiding and directing kids. This was what he loved, but a combination of college demands and rehearsal schedules meant that Blaine almost never got to see him in action.

Twenty minutes after the boys disappeared to call their “George,” Kurt had the team in motion. They still had the shell-shocked look of nocturnal animals in the sunlight, but they were starting to feel useful and that was half the battle. For the most part, Kurt just sent them off to start doing the jobs they had already been assigned for the bake sale: Dex and Nursey drew up a tentative shopping list based on Bitty’s greatest hits, Ransom put together a ballpark budget, and Chowder wrote out a list of errands for himself that “might help Bitty” when they came back out. Meanwhile Holster got started on his social media duties, and started turning down interview requests like a boss. Kurt had tried to keep Whiskey involved, but nothing really took, so he finally let Blaine lead Whiskey off to sit on the stairs, while Tango hovered like a worried moth.

“Is there anything I can do?" asked Tango. "Do you get that it wasn’t your fault, because it really wasn’t your fault? I probably would have tweeted something a lot worse. I don’t know what would have been worse, but—” He paused. “Do you want me to go away?”

Blaine just about swatted at him, but Whiskey sighed, “It’s fine, dude. You can stay.”

So Whiskey stayed, and Blaine told them about the Gap Attack. He got all the way to the aftermath before Whiskey smiled. A bigger talk could wait until another day. At the moment, the poor kid just needed to remember that most people were gigantic idiots.

By the time Bitty slipped out of the study and came back into the living room, Kurt had sent the entire group (minus Lardo) over to the theater, ostensibly to “scope out the area,” and told them to await further directions back at the Haus. Then, much to Kurt’s delight, Holster actually saluted. After they left, Kurt had retired to the kitchen, a stack of cookbooks in his arms, so Blaine was the only one still waiting when Bitty flopped onto the couch.

“He might be a while yet. We finished talking to his manager, but he needs a little time before he deals with all of this.” He waved his hand absentmindedly at the chaos in the room. “Lardo passed him the computer so he could talk to Shitty. Or, I suppose, so he could listen to Shitty talk about nothing for a while. Usually that helps.”

Blaine thought about all the times in Lima and New York when he’d asked Sam to just talk to him when he couldn’t get his heart rate to come down. It hadn’t mattered what Sam talked about; sometimes he talked about his own abs. Blaine just needed someone talking who got that he wasn’t able to respond. The words washed over him like white noise until his mind shifted back into place. “I understand,” he said with his most reassuring smile.

But Bitty wasn’t really listening. In the walk back to the couch, the calm, collected Bitty who’d walked his boyfriend back into the study was gone, replaced by the boy who’d fallen asleep in Blaine’s class. “Professor, I am so sorry about everything. I hope you know that. Here you are with a theater crisis on your hands and we walk in with this catastrophe of our own. You didn’t sign up for this.”

“I’m a teacher, Bitty,” Blaine said with self-conscious shrug. “That means I definitely signed up to protect my students from vultures who want to keep them from being themselves.” He looked toward the office where Jack was still murmuring toward the computer screen. “It’s going to be bad, isn’t it?”

Bitty nodded, his gaze incredibly full. “I think so, but I don’t really know. He’s going to be the first. I do know that. Jack Laurent Zimmermann is going to be the first and only out member of the NHL.”

“And you don’t know if he can take the pressure?”

“Oh, no, sir.” Bitty sat up straight. “I know he can take the pressure and even if he couldn’t, then I would. If anyone wants to destroy that man, they are going to have to go through me once a day and twice on Sundays. But he’s not the only person we have to think about. I know, deep down inside, he’s ready, but what about his team? What about his friends and what about his mother? Goodness, what about my mama? I still haven’t called.” He dropped his head in his hands and let Blaine pat his back.

He could almost see the hurricane coming down on this poor boy’s head, and anything he could say felt like offering a piece of cardboard in the middle of a storm. He and Kurt might be able to organize the hell out the aftermath, but nothing in his thirty-some years as a gay man in America had prepared him to teach Jack and Bitty how to be the first gay anything, let alone the first in a sport that even he knew wasn’t hospitable to “diverse orientations.” Still, Blaine stared at the photos on their shelves—the first proposal, graduation, the wedding, their first prom—he did know something about jumping in with both feet.

Blaine leaned in. “Bitty, I know this is really scary. You’re right to be scared, but for a minute just think about Jack.” Bitty’s breath slowed as he listened. “Now, don’t think about Jack’s family or his work. Just him. You’d do anything he needs? If he wasn’t okay, you’d take care of him?” Bitty sniffled as he nodded. “And that’s because he’s worth it, right? He makes you want to be brave?” Bitty looked up from his hands, eyes wide. He nodded again. “Then, if he brings that out in you, maybe you can trust that other people will feel the same way about him. Maybe his teammates and his family will get ready, because they don’t have a choice; he needs them to get in the game.”

Bitty glanced over to where voices were still coming from the office and Lardo was still waiting by the door. Blaine got the sense that if he looked back in three hours or three days, she would still be there. Bitty breathed out, slowly, and when he looked at Blaine, his eyes had lost some of their glossy sheen. Actually, they looked downright amused. He slowly cocked his head as the corners of his mouth started to twitch. “Get in the game? Well goodness. Professor Anderson, I didn’t know you knew your way around a sports metaphor.”

“Excuse me?” Blaine considered being offended, but he couldn’t bother. Bitty was smiling.

“ _X-Men_ or _Star Wars_ metaphors I would have expected,” Bitty said, thoughtfully. “You’re full of surprises.”

Blaine rolled his eyes and leaned back, his hands in the air. “I think this is a chirp. I try to help and I’m being _chirped_. Kurt will be thrilled.”

“Why am I going to be thrilled?” Kurt asked as he came in from the kitchen, his sale planning books still in his hands.

Blaine looked back over his shoulder until he could see Kurt from below. “I’ve been initiated into the hockey tribe. I’m sorry, but your husband is now officially a jock.”

“Now? Really?” Kurt settled on the love seat and leveled Blaine with a look that was at least half for Bitty’s benefit. “That would suggest you weren't already half jock on the day I met you.” He rolled his eyes at Blaine’s raised brow. “Yes, I know what I said at the rink, but did you tell Eric here that one of our first non-dates was to a high school football game?”

“Your brother was on the team!”

“Not that day he wasn’t,” Kurt shot back, and turned toward Bitty. “It’s a long story. Suffice it to say that I wasn’t really at that game for the action on the field. Of course, Captain Oblivious over here wouldn’t have known that even if I’d painted his name on my chest and done a little dance at halftime.”

Blaine pursed his lips and tried not to grin. A few years ago, that joke might have stung. Kurt had known the score when Blaine was still imagining names for his future children with Jeremiah Livingston of the Lima Mall. But that was a long time ago. They’d been through too much for Blaine to feel anything but affection for his former self. He’d gotten there eventually.

“It wasn’t meant to be,” he shrugged. “If a bird had died you might have had better luck.”

Now Bitty just looked confused. He pointed toward the office. “‘Scuse me, fellas. I’m just going to go check on my own Captain Oblivious back there. It’s been a while and I want to make sure he hasn’t climbed out the window.” He said it lightly, but there was real concern in his eyes, so Blaine waved him off and they both watched him go.

After a long, quiet pause, Kurt moved to the spot where Bitty had been. The arm of the sofa sat between them, but it was still the closest he could get to Blaine without sitting in his lap. He sighed. “Those poor kids. Did you know people have already retweeted that picture in other countries? It’s sick. I don’t even know what I would have done if I’d had my sexuality splashed all over the world before I was ready.” He grimaced. “Having it splashed all over one school was bad enough.”

“I know.” Blaine held out his hand over the arm of the sofa and let Kurt grab on. It was too tight, but Blaine understood. It was a reminder that they were free. No one could make them live through that again. “There are already articles up online. I saw something on some gossip rag. They don’t know anything, but they don’t have to. Then there’s Facebook and god knows what else. For all I know, assholes could be printing it off and sticking it up on the bulletin boards in 7-11s.”

“Could get expensive.”

“The color copying alone—”

“But someone would probably do it,” Kurt said, and it was like he was living in Blaine’s head. “And why? Because it would let them make some queer hockey player’s life a living hell. Don’t quote me on this later, but I swear, sometimes I hate people.” He held out his phone. “By the way, Chowder texted. Reporters are outside their frat house. Apparently Ransom got the lot of them with the hose.”

Blaine smiled. Good for Justin. It was a shame the water wasn’t cold enough to freeze; that might have taught the paparazzi a lesson in common courtesy.

By the time Bitty and Jack emerged from the office, all ragged around the edges, Blaine had let Kurt tug him over to the sofa. If they were going to pretend they weren’t waiting, they could at least do it together.

“I love Shitty. If I ever forget, please remind me. That boy is a strange, profanity-laced gem. Oh, and George sends her regards,” Bitty said, and Blaine couldn’t tell if he was kidding. “She texted to say that the PR folks for the team are _busy_ at the moment.” He let Jack pick a chair and then settled on the floor so he could lean his head back against Jack’s knees.

Blaine let out a low, dark laugh. “I must be her favorite person right now. One visit to the queer professor’s house, and their star is out on national television.”

“Well, I don’t think she’s going to have you over for cocktails anytime soon—which is a shame, because she makes a mean martini—but you’re not anywhere near the top of her trouble list.” He looked up and gave Jack an affectionate poke in the ankle.

“Yeah. I’m pretty far up there,” Jack said sheepishly. “Right now, I think I am the list.” When Kurt and Blaine just stared at him, he actually blushed. “I did kiss him.”

Blaine blinked. “Why you? You didn’t know Whiskey was taking a picture.”

Jack just shrugged. “I knew we were in a room with a half-dozen hockey players, including Rans and Holster. If he hadn’t gotten the picture, someone else probably would have noticed. Really, I should have known better. I did know better.” He trailed off as he caught Bitty’s eye and let his hand rest on the back of Bitty’s neck. Blaine smiled. Of course he knew better, but it had been God knows how many weeks since they'd seen each other, and sometimes knowing wasn’t enough.

Kurt saved Jack from having to find his words by announcing he was “positively famished” and offering to order something for everyone still fighting the good fight. Soon, four pizzas appeared on their doorstep, closely followed by one hungry Chowder who’d finally gotten the green light from Lardo to come back. Justin and the others were doing fine back at the Haus, especially once Kurt promised to text further orders, but Chowder need more reassurance.

“It’s not because of Kurt or Professor Anderson or anyone else,” he insisted. “You’re all SUPER together and could probably handle a ton of days like this and be totally fine, so I wasn’t _worried_ worried. Not exactly. I know Jack will be fine. He’s Jack and Bitty can take _anything_ , but if something bad happened to someone I cared about, I’d probably want people to come check and make sure I was okay and—” He finally took a breath, probably because he was about to pass out in the foyer.

Bitty beckoned him over to his patch of the floor and pulled him down for a hug. “We’re fine, Chowder. I am, and so is Jack. Thank you for checking.” Then he pressed a plateful of pizza into Chowder’s hands and tried, without success, not to look all teary.

For two hours, they all turned off their phones and ate pizza with _Steven Universe_ on the television. Blaine didn’t know what on earth was going on, but apparently Holster had gotten Chowder hooked and Bitty thought it would calm everyone down. No one really watched, but Bitty was right: it was hard to get too stressed out during a show about a little boy with magical powers in his bellybutton.

And it was good to eat. Blaine had forgotten how long it had been since lunch. The real marvel of the meal, though, was watching Jack slowly unfurl. After a solid twenty minutes of watching the others chatter about _Game of Thrones_ and Beyoncé—and WOW were Bitty and Kurt ever ready to talk about Beyoncé—Jack finally started to say more than five words at a time and, frankly, Blaine was fascinated. Where Bitty’s sentences seemed to pop out of his mouth before Bitty himself could plan for them, Jack studied each word before it appeared, like a bricklayer building a road. He was thoughtful, and even when he wasn’t particularly effusive it was apparent that he loved certain things with every cell in his body. Obviously there was Bitty, and hockey. But he also got excited about the biography on Lyndon B. Johnson that he'd finished last week. Robert Caro’s _Path to Power_ was, apparently, “worth the time.”

Other loves took a little longer to emerge.

Once everyone was well into their pizza coma, Lardo’s phone pinged, and she announced that Shitty was coming down earlier than planned.

“Oh for goodness sake!” Bitty sat up against Jack’s side. “Lardo, you tell that man exactly what I told my mother. Coming down here is only going to turn his life upside down and that’s not going to help anyone.”

Lardo just rolled her eyes and kept typing. “Dude, you have a less than zero chance of changing his mind. He’s already in the car. Honestly, you’re lucky he didn’t Skype Jack from the freeway.” Jack gave her a look that was probably supposed to say “This idiot, eh?” but there was a fondness in his eyes, the likes of which Blaine only used for Rachel or Sam. That was a look saved for family. Lardo sent it right back. “He requests that you have Five-Hour Energy on hand when he arrives so he can, quote, ‘start tearing and caring’ without a visit to Stop&Shop.”

Kurt added Five-Hour Energy to the shopping list. He also finally asked Bitty and Jack what they wanted to do next. Clearly, no one wanted to talk about anything past the pizza, but at some point they had to figure out what the heck they were going to do the next morning, not to mention on Saturday. Kurt explained that he was perfectly fine canceling the sale. It wasn’t like any of them needed extra excitement in their lives. Still, Bitty just about climbed over Lardo in his insistence that Kurt _had to have the sale_.

“You cannot cancel it on our account,” he said, as serious as Blaine had ever seen him. “I couldn’t bear it. You’d still be in the same bind and you have to know that I want to make the sale happen. There is no way we’re going to let a little institutionalized homophobia kill the best bake sale north of Texas. I don’t love that many things, but I love baking and I love this boy.”

“And Beyoncé,” Chowder added.

“Her too, but I don’t see any reason why I can’t have those three things at the same time.”

“Also, the paparazzi can kiss your ass,” said Lardo.

“Exactly.” Bitty sat back down with the air of a man who had said his piece.

“How do we do it, then?” Jack asked, and no one asked what he meant. Bitty’s energy (and George’s support) was all well and good, but they still had to figure out how to throw a theater-saving bake sale in the middle of a media circus.

Everyone looked at Kurt, who squared his shoulders like he was going into battle. They had several options, he explained, but it was all up to them. “Basically,” he said, “it comes down to whether you want to distract the media or give them something good to stare at.” Jack and Bitty looked uncomfortable with both options. The press conference option was too clinical, the interview option too formal, and the staged performance option too likely to send Jack running for the hills. Plus, Bitty said, all the distraction options seemed like they’d work for about five minutes before the reporters got back to asking about their sex lives.

(That was when Chowder started choking on air.)

Jack looked like he was chewing on a particularly difficult thought for ages, so Kurt finally looked him in the eye. “Jack,” he asked, “What do you want your choice to say?” Jack sat back, his eyes wide, but he answered quickly.

“I want to say that I love him,” he said. “I do, so I should say that.” He didn’t turn when Chowder squeaked or when Lardo got something in her eye. “I want to be clear, and I don’t want to say that to anyone but Eric. If I can, I just want to say it to him.” He frowned at the floor. “Does that make sense?”

Kurt nodded. It made sense. Of course it made sense, and if the light in Kurt’s eyes was anything to go by, it could be the beginning of a plan.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one's shorter than usual, but I promise the next update will be nice and lengthy. Plus, I've decided to fold the epilogue into the last main chapter, so it will all be up next Tuesday. Enjoy!

For the next few days, Blaine’s house became his world.

If he paid attention to anything beyond their home and their plans for the bake sale, he would have to deal with the Zimmermann circus and that was never going to be a good idea. Some part of him had thought it couldn’t be as bad as Jack and Bitty expected. Blaine knew media silliness. He’d been around when Kurt’s dad had run for office and he couldn’t believe a bunch of hockey fans could make Sue “baboon heart” Sylvester look tame by comparison. Rick “the Stick” was bad enough.

Apparently, the reporters at the Haus were just the beginning. There were articles on _Yardbarker_ and _Deadspin_ , and dedicated threads on _Reddit_ and _Datalounge_. Blaine hadn’t heard of half of these sites before, but this week they were throwing his name around like they were his first cousins once removed. It didn’t matter that he and Kurt had just housed the meeting. According to Twitter, he was still the perverted teacher who’d taken in everyone’s favorite messed-up hockey star and made him gay. He swore that half of the internet was tarring and feathering poor Whiskey for the original tweet and the other half had focused on Blaine as some kind of academic temptress, luring innocent heteros into a life of sin. His research niche was helping with that one.

It was funny for about five minutes, until he realized he didn’t have tenure yet. He could be fired for bringing on that kind of firestorm and he was pretty sure that at any other university he would have been out on his well-educated behind by the end of the week. Luckily, this was Samwell and the administration was much more worried about looking homophobic than about one former student’s reputation. It was touch and go for a day or so, because that former student was Jack Zimmermann, but then Bad Bob called the provost to speak on Blaine’s behalf, and the question of firing him was put to rest. Blaine Anderson was not going to be anyone’s sacrificial lamb.

That didn’t mean it was going to be easy. He still had to teach classes full of students who just wanted to ask about Bittle, and he had to sit through a _humiliating_ meeting with the chair of the English department and the Dean of Academic Affairs.

No, he did not make a habit of hanging out with his students. _This was true._

Yes, he was aware of the optics of the situation. _This was very true_.

No, he didn’t plan to continue arranging not-so-secret get-togethers between famous hockey players and their student boyfriends. _This . . . was potentially less true, but they didn’t need to know that._

And yes, Dean Huddlin, he was aware that he was being petulant, but that’s what came of treating someone like a _child._

That entire embarrassing debacle went down on Wednesday, from noon until well after 6 p.m., so it was a blessing to come home to the sale preparations still in swing. Since Monday, Kurt and Blaine’s house had become the unofficial planning headquarters, and it was amazing how quickly they got used to hockey players traipsing in and out at all hours of the day. Sometimes Rans was in the living room peering at his spreadsheets, or Tango was in the garage re-counting supplies. Other times they could hear Shitty on the phone upstairs, pacing up and down the hallway. He really had blown into town ready to take names, and Blaine found himself glad that they were on the same team.

Half the time he ran into Holster trying to keep the Samwell media satisfied with a hundred variations on, “I ain’t telling you jack shit,” but the constant was always Bitty. He’d essentially taken up residence in Kurt and Blaine’s kitchen, and Blaine wasn’t sure he was going to leave when the sale was over. They had so many good pans. To be honest, Blaine wasn’t sure he wanted any of them to simply disappear after the weekend, but he hadn’t come up with a way to say that that didn’t sound weird.

After Blaine’s day from hell, he came home to Bitty and Kurt making chocolate peanut-butter moon pies and low-key grooving in the kitchen. The lyrics echoed through the house through the power of their excellent sound-system, and Blaine found himself wondering when he’d lost track of the music his students liked. It was pretty.

_My youth is yours._

_Trippin' on skies, sippin' waterfalls._

 

Blaine leaned against the wall that led to the living room and watched quietly as they worked. Bitty skimmed across the floor like it was his own private dance hall and the cupboards made up his adoring crowd. Kurt was . . . less graceful, but they had a rhythm going and when Bitty needed more butter or baking soda, it appeared at his fingertips without his having to say the words. Kurt held out a mixing bowl full of a shiny, dark batter for Bitty to taste, and Blaine watched them debate what it needed. Kurt said more cocoa powder, Bitty was leaning toward a combination of carob and semi-sweet chocolate, and they both had reasons that Blaine couldn’t follow to save his life. In the end, they decided to make one batch each way—for science—and Blaine was pretty sure they both thought they’d won.

He was so busy following the action that he didn’t see when Jack started watching too. “Something else, aren’t they?” he murmured, as he leaned against the other side of the hall, his arms crossed over his chest. “Do you bake?”

Blaine grinned. “Not like that.” He could hold his own against Kurt if he had to make a couple cakes or a dozen cookies, but Kurt had the real edge on creativity, not to mention the endurance. Only one of them had taught himself how to make a soufflé before puberty.

“Bittle tries to teach me sometimes. There was a class last fall and we had to cook for the final.” Jack smiled down at his arms. “It was fun.”

“Were you any good?”

Now Jack laughed. “No. I was—” he shook his head. “I messed up his kitchen. There was flour everywhere. Did the same thing this summer in Madison, but he likes it when I try.”

In the kitchen, Kurt circled around Bitty to wash the stand mixer as Bitty turned toward the fridge. As they returned to their spots, Bitty handed off several sticks of butter for the next round of moon pies, like they’d planned it from the beginning. It wasn’t quite a hockey play, or even show choir choreography, but it was close.

“So, you met Eric’s parents?” Blaine asked, carefully. “I’m sure that must have been nice.”

It took Jack a few minutes to answer, but the silence was easy. “It was,” he finally said. “His parents, Coach and Suzanne, aren’t like my parents. They’re quiet about things.”

Blaine nodded. That, he understood.

“But they love him. They still love him.” He suddenly ducked his head, and his lips twitched. “You know his mom wants me to come back now? She said she ‘needs a redo’ on the visit because she didn’t realize she was meeting the boyfriend.” He shrugged. “I don’t get it. I’m still me. It’s the same thing.”

Blaine snorted. “No, it’s not.” Meeting the friend meant suggesting that Burt talk to Kurt about sex. Meeting the boyfriend meant pretending that neither of them had ever heard of sex or pamphlets or any part of a ’59 Chevy. There was a big difference.

“No,” Jack said with a smile, “it’s not.”

“Blaine!” Kurt finally turned around and noticed his audience, now giggling in the hallway. “Good. You’re here. We need someone to start on the scones. Do you remember the recipe from the bake sale in Brooklyn?”

“Do I remember the recipe?” Blaine echoed, in mock horror. He didn’t, but he could figure it out. How hard could cranberry scones be? Or was it almonds?

Jack waved as the bakers pulled Blaine into the dance, and they all hummed along to a song about being perfectly, painfully young. 

_Mortal bodies, timeless souls._

_Cross your fingers, here we go._


	6. Chapter 6

When Blaine was little, he’d loved _Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory._ Not the book—although that was good too—but the 1971 movie with Gene Wilder and a bunch of other old actors he didn’t bother to remember. It had the slightly classic Hollywood factor that always made him swoon, but in this case, it was mostly the fantasy. Any kid could wish for cake or candy, but it took a marvelous brain to imagine a whole world made anew, from top to bottom, with pure pleasure. Sure, there were gestures made toward life lessons and education—blah blah blah—but nothing in the Wonka Factory was really there unless it could make someone happy. From age six to nine, Blaine had dreamt of winning a real-life golden ticket, and even then it was only supplanted by his dream of growing up to be Gene Wilder. Someday, he was going to make people happy too.

In retrospect, Blaine had chosen a poor model for teaching (Samwell frowned on symbolic, candy-based torture as a pedagogical tool), but he’d chosen the perfect model for being married to Kurt Hummel. If anyone could make Willy Wonka look like a rank amateur, he’d found his guy.

In three-and-a-half hours, Kurt, Lardo, and the team turned the Young Players Shakespeare Theater into a sugar wonderland, the likes of which had never been seen outside of the silver screen. With a few choice table rentals (and a lot of SMH manpower), they covered the entire lawn, entryway, and first floor in baked goods, and that wasn’t even counting the backup store that Bitty had made from midnight to six a.m. “just in case there’s a run on the meringues.” All the cakes had special containers, the cupcakes had stands, the cookies were packaged (lovingly) in their own little wax bags, lemonade was available for an extra charge, and separate tables for vegan and gluten-free shoppers were almost full-to-bursting. By ten a.m. the exhausted group had only to pray for good weather and a crowd.

Chowder was beside himself.

As the first round of shoppers hurried in from the street, Blaine tucked his phone into his pocket and glanced up at the cloudy sky. According to the weather channel, rain wasn’t a real danger until after dark and, as he surveyed the front lawn, he was sure they didn’t have to worry about the crowd.

Any space that wasn’t covered in cookies and pies was already absolutely packed with people. The anticipated crowd that would have shown up to see the hockey team perform Shakespeare was nothing next to the crowd of rubberneckers who wanted to watch Jack Zimmermann do literally anything. If that “anything” happened to include kissing and small college boys, so much the better. Since the scandalous picture itself was from their planning meeting, it was pretty clear that Zimmerman himself was going to be there with _the guy he was kissing_. In essence, every single tweet, Facebook post, and article that included the “Zimmermann kiss” was also a tiny advertisement for the sale.

So, yes, by 10:30 a.m. Blaine didn’t have room to breathe, but he was also watching his husband make money hand-over-fist, so he didn’t really care.

“Doing okay, gentlemen?” he asked as he passed behind Dex and Nursey at the registers. They both nodded, in unison, and Blaine would have been confused if he hadn’t already gotten used to Ransom and Holster sharing a brain. The players might have all been sweethearts, but defensemen were scary when they were in the zone. “I’ll just leave you to it, then.” He smiled and backed away before anyone in line could ask him for a discount éclair.

On the other side of the lawn, near the far left theater wall, Holster had managed to corral the press into a kind of makeshift pen. Someone had strung up literal red tape between a square of stakes in the ground, and the representatives from the local ABC and NBC affiliates were huddled inside like the White House Press Corps waiting for an interview with the President. Blaine didn’t know how Holster had managed to convince them that they couldn’t go into the actual sale without permission; maybe they were all under the mistaken assumption that the Samwell provosts were running the show, but Blaine wasn’t going to question success.

That is, he wasn’t going to question it while it was still hilarious.

While the media representatives tried to find Zimmermann in the crowd, Shitty patrolled the ribbon barrier like a corporal at Fort Dix. He was also wearing a cut-off sweatshirt the same color and texture as police caution tape. It was—to borrow Kurt’s terminology—daring. “Okay guys, gals, and non-binary pals, here’s how it’s going to go,” he barked. “If you ask questions, I’m going to answer them to the best of my ability. No, I will not answer them beyond my ability. I have no control over that ability. No, I will not answer stupid questions. No, I will not elaborate. Do you know why, Mark?”

“Because you already answered them to the best of your ability?” Mark, from _The Hockey News_ , said tentatively.

“Absolutely, Mark. Holster, give this man a prize.” Hoster handed Mark a mini-pie, and the reporter from _Deadspin_ scowled. He had not gotten a pie. “Finally, and this one’s important,” Shitty announced. “I will not, under any circumstances, go get my bro and pure Canadian-lifemate Jack Zimmermann so that you can slake your understandable lust for his vital fluids. He’s staying over there and you lucky professionals are stuck with me. Who’s up?”

Blaine didn’t even bother disguising his glee as the reporters took down what Shitty said like the gospel and slowly began to raise their hands.

“Alright, first question to the brah in the sick blazer,” he said and the representative from MSNBC pointed at herself. “Yeah you. I like what the collar is doing for your vibe. You may speak.”

“Mr. Shitty,” she asked, with a smile, “Will Jack be making a statement about why he’s kept his homosexual love hidden from the NHL?”

And that’s when Blaine made his exit. Still, as he fled for the theater doors he heard Shitty in pain behind his back. “Arrgggghhh,” he moaned. “WHAT did I say about stupid questions?”

He didn’t get the chance to hear Shitty schooling the press on heteronormativity and the history of American sexual shame, but the action going on inside the theater was almost as good. Just beyond the last tables of cakes and brownies, the main stage had been left empty for the main show. The tadpoles had done an impressive job of setting up dozens of folding chairs in a series of wide arcs, so that patrons could slowly make their way through the sale and then enjoy their bounty with a little something from the Shakespearean canon. In theory, the performance was going to be casual. The monologues and other pieces were supposed to be bite-sized, so shoppers could come and go as they pleased, but Blaine didn’t trust that Kurt would stick to that plan.

For one, he would have cried if anyone walked out in the middle of one of his kids’ monologues.

For two, he already had the tadpoles herding attendees toward the theater with bullhorns.

At least, Tango was using his bullhorn. Whiskey was just looking at his like it might choose to explain why this was a good idea. So while Tango cried, “SHAKESPEARE IN THE THEATER and also not just Shakespeare! There’s going to be other things too, I think? You can go inside even if you don’t really _get_ Shakespeare! THAT’S NOT A REQUIREMENT,” Kurt bustled around the stage, checking lights and setting up props.

Nothing about the staging was actually that complicated. The most anyone needed was a fake skull or a few wooden swords, but the set of Kurt’s jaw suggested that he’d explained the show to Tango a couple dozen times and it just hadn't taken. At least the audience knew where to go. Blaine hoped the announcements would inspire curiosity rather than concern. He considered offering to help correct any misconceptions. Whiskey certainly wasn’t helping, but as soon as Kurt got up to welcome the crowd, he remembered why the theater was so successful: Kurt Hummel didn’t need any help putting on a show.

“Welcome, welcome!” Kurt waved from the lip of the stage and—despite having gotten less than four hours of sleep over the previous two nights—he glowed. “I’m glad you could join us for our little gustatory and theatrical soiree. My husband, Blaine, suggested calling it the Shake ’n Bake, but I thought we had enough excitement without inviting the lawyers from Kraft into the party.”

_Ba-dum-tssh._

The audience tittered nervously, but an intangible tension also lifted away. Everyone in the room knew about the media mess and Kurt had just acknowledged it without referring to Jack Zimmermann. Yep, that was his man.

“As many of you know, this event could never have happened without the generous help of your very own Samwell Men’s Hockey team! Give them a hand, guys.” A roar rose up from the audience, and Kurt grinned. “As you may know, we will be thanking them for all of their hard work by making them do just a little bit more. It’s time for a little Shakespeare, courtesy of your very own Samwell all-stars. Think of it as a mash-up of two great things that we don’t usually get to enjoy in a single package. Also, please be kind to our featured guests, folks. It takes a lot of courage to get up in front of all of you without a face mask and a big stick.”

At “package” and “big stick,” the crowd of hockey players started giggling like fifth-graders, and Kurt had to fight to keep it together for the rest of his introduction. “Now, without further ado,” he said quickly, “we will begin with Maya Chan performing a monologue from _Twelfth Night_ followed by Justin Oluransi and Adam Birkholtz performing a scene from _Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead_. Thank you!”

Rans and Holster beamed like ten-year-olds getting called up for their first piano recital, and disappeared backstage to hoots from the crowd. Meanwhile, Blaine laughed under his breath; the audience wasn’t going to know what hit them. The other Samwell students and some of the parents probably thought the players were going to get up there and ham their way through the scenes, like ironic Shakespearean actors. Little did they know that no one had been able to pull Rans away from his script all week. They were doing less than a page of dialogue and Holster had insisted on costumes.

“Hey,” Lardo whispered and beckoned him over to an empty seat in the hockey section of the crowd. “They do know that _Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead_ isn’t actually Shakespeare, right?” Blaine assured her that they did, but Kurt had okayed it anyway. After seeing their read-through, he couldn’t say no. It was too eerily perfect.

Once Maya finished her _Twelfth Night_ monologue to much applause, Rans and Holster strode onstage, game faces in place. If Blaine hadn’t known better, he would have thought they were going to kick poor Maya’s ass. They hadn’t been able to find proper doublets or pantaloons in time for the show, but they'd both borrowed shirts with “some flowy shit going on” from the theater department and wore collar ruffs that might have been made out of coffee filters. Lardo seemed to approve.

Holster planted himself in the middle of the stage and turned back to Rans. “Bro?” he began.

“BROOOOOO.”

“What's the first thing you remember, man?”

“Oh, let's see ...The first thing that comes into my head, you mean?”

“No, dude,” Holster shook his head, the picture of frustration. “What’s the first thing you remember?”

And so it went.

“How long have you had a crappy memory, dude?”

Rans looked out at the audience, stunned. “Dude, I can't _remember_.”

They might have made a few changes to the original script.

As they finished, Shitty leaned over the back of Blaine’s chair and whispered loudly enough for the entire row to hear him. “Brah, this was our old goalie’s favorite play. Johnson loved this shit.”

Lardo stared at the stage and nodded slowly, like that was the most logical thing she’d heard all day.

After several more performances by children who were too adorable and talented for words, Chowder inched his way on stage, script in hand, and read a remarkably short poem or monologue or something from _As You Like It_. It was too sweet for words, really. He didn’t really have the phrasing down right, but the enthusiasm was there in buckets, and the looks he kept shooting Caitlyn Farmer turned the whole performance into, in Shitty’s words, “a fucking beaut.” The audience adored him.

Well, most of the audience adored him, but most of the audience didn’t care about the Shakespeare of it all. Before he’d finished, Blaine heard Nursey lean and whisper in Dex’s ear. “Man, does he know that that section was supposed to be really bad poetry? That was shit Orlando wrote on the trees and it was supposed to be _bad_.”

Dex squinted at the stage, where Chowder was still beaming. “I don’t think he knows that.”

“Should we tell him?”

Holster, now back in his seat, swatted Nursey on the back of the head. “Dude, be cool. Look at that face.”

Nursey looked. “Nah. I still want to tell him.”

Holster put Nursey in a headlock.

For the next thirty minutes, the team members and a rotating crowd of sweet-eating observers watched the kids work their way through highlights of the Shakespearean canon. It was cute, but even Blaine was getting a little antsy by the time Kurt came out to present their final two performances. Of course, he announced, he’d saved the most memorable for last. He couldn’t necessarily say both of their names in mixed company, but he could promise that they would each put on quite a show.

“Are you ready, Mr. Knight?” Kurt called backstage.

“Brah, I’m like a meninist at a Trump rally. LET’S DO THIS THING.”

Kurt blinked. “Well, okay then.”

He slid out of the way and let Shitty burst onto the stage like a burnt-out lounge singer jonesing for another shot at the big time. Then he whipped out what he called, “an ode to Jack Zimmermann’s everything.” It turned out to be sonnet sixty-eight (a.k.a., one of the ones about a really hot dude) and, two lines in, Blaine realized they probably should have given some kind of content warning before they let Shitty have the microphone. He never exactly said he was talking about “dat ass,” but he also didn’t need to.

“Thus is his CHEEK the map of days outworn,” he said, with equal parts majesty and love. “When beauty liv'd and DIED as flowers do now, before the BASTARD signs of fair were borne, or durst inhabit on a living brow.” Shitty clutched his chest with one hand and used the other to point back to where Jack was giggling against the back wall. “You are too beautiful to live, my friend. You are a MAP OF NATURE.”

“Mr. Knight?”

“A MAP.”

Shitty finished with a quiet, “I love you, bro,” right into the mike and Blaine suddenly realized he had something in his eye, like a stick or an entire tree.

In contrast to Shitty’s three-ring circus, Bitty’s entrance was subtle. He slipped on just as Shitty left, and Blaine almost missed the tiny low-five they shared as he passed. He made his way forward and peered out into the crowd. “Hi y’all,” he said, and waved from the middle of the stage. “I’m not usually one for making speeches—”

“SAYS THE MAN WITH A VLOG.”

“Oh _shush_ , Holster. I do not usually perform for crowds, but Professor Anderson said that this theater was in dire straits and, well,” he shrugged, “I do need a better grade.” He grinned at the laughter that rolled through the room, and Blaine shot him a thumbs-up. “Anyway, I’d like to dedicate this poem to everyone who helped make today possible. Yes, of course, I’m talking about everyone making noise in this corner--”

He waved and they cheered back.

“I think you know that’s my team, but they’re also my friends and my family.” His voice wobbled and he closed his eyes just long enough to pull himself back together. “We weren’t born into any bond, but I can’t imagine my life without these men and women. I can’t do it and I don’t even want to try. Now,” he said with a shaky smile, “I’m not saying y’all need to go strap on skates and get busy. As my mama likes to tell me, not everyone was born for that sort of thing, but you should find your people. It doesn’t matter if that means playing games or watching TV shows or reading books only three other people care about in the whole world, but keep going. Keep being yourself, because if you stop, how on earth are those three other people ever going to find you?”

Bitty looked out over the crowd, magnetic in his stillness. “There’s a whole lot of love in this world, folks,” he said, quietly. “For a long time I didn’t know if I deserved any of it, but now I know better. Now, I’m pretty sure everyone deserves at least few folks who’d fight through heaven and hell to have your back.”

He cleared his throat, and kept his eyes locked on the back of the room as he started to read:

“Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments,” he began. “Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds, or bends with the remover to remove: Oh no; it is an ever-fixed mark, that looks on tempests, and is never shaken.”

He had a paper in his hand, and Blaine had to assume it was his sonnet, but Bitty never looked down at the page. After Shitty, his performance was downright spare. He didn’t use big gestures and he didn’t raise his voice. He just said the whole poem, with its tempests and stars, like he was sharing a simple truth. It wasn’t grand or glorious. It was just _true_.

He finished just as quietly. “If this be error and upon me proved, I never writ, nor no man ever loved.” Then he folded his paper and stepped toward the lip of the stage, right next to the stairs that led to the audience below. He paused there and, at first, Blaine thought he was going to keep talking. He wouldn’t have been the only performer to prepare two poems, but then he noticed that Bitty wasn’t alone.

There was someone waiting for him at the stairs.

While Bitty spoke, Jack walked up from the back of the theater and stood waiting on the ground floor. As he looked up, there was a kind of awe in his eyes, like Bitty made the universe on his way to class. He had one hand out, palm up, ready to help his boy walk down the stairs.

Blaine slapped a hand over his mouth and swallowed a deeply inappropriate giggle. Kurt had clearly outdone himself. The moment at the front of the room was incredibly romantic: half _Moulin Rouge_ and half Jack Dawson on the Titanic. It was also incredibly, well, _Blaine_. He and Kurt had never been in this kind of situation, thank god, but if one of them had been a famous hockey player and had to come out of the closet at a bake sale, this is exactly what he would have done. Until today, it’s also exactly the sort of thing he could never have imagined Jack doing. He and Bitty hardly held hands in front of their closest friends, and not just because of the secrecy. Five minutes with Jack and it was clear that he liked keeping certain things to himself. He liked to be private about feelings, and yet, for Bitty, he could get used to being a public sort of man.

On the stage, Bitty pressed his lips together, tight, like he was trying not to cry. But then he took Jack’s hand and let his big, awkward hockey boyfriend lead him down, step-by-step. It was Disney-level perfection—that is, until Bitty was partway down the steps and it happened.

Jack paused.

He let go of Bitty’s hand, dropped his eyes to the ground, and, for half a second, Bitty just stood there, blinking. He had no poker face. None. Blaine almost saw the cogs turning in his brain; _he didn’t need Jack’s help walking, but he did still need to get down the stairs, and this wasn’t how they'd practiced at all_. But, most of all, _Jack, honey, are you okay?_

He leaned in and said something, quietly, by Jack’s ear. Jack didn’t respond or, rather, he didn’t speak. Instead, he looked up, his gaze strong as a beacon of light on Bitty’s face. Jack took a deep breath, wrapped his arms around Bitty’s waist, and slowly pulled him in for a kiss. The touch itself was tentative. Their lips brushed together, then Jack pulled away, his brow furrowed as if to ask, “Is this okay?”

Bitty stared at him, his eyes wide, but then he gave an almost imperceptible nod and pulled Jack back in.

For one long breath, the theater was silent. Blaine ‘s heartbeat echoed in his ears, until Shitty screamed, “GET IT BITS,” and the room exploded. Whoops flew from the hockey corner of the crowd and, as Bitty wrapped his arms around Jack’s neck, Chowder let out a squeal made of pure joy.

The entire kiss probably only lasted a couple seconds. It never got heated, thank goodness, but by the time Jack lifted Bitty from the step and deposited him on the floor, the show was far out of Kurt’s control. The press reps from everywhere were going out of their minds, the bake sale attendees who didn’t know about the Zimmermann scandal were deeply confused about the kissing athletes, and then there was Shitty booking it across the stage to kiss Jack right on the mouth.

Two inches from Jack’s face he murmured, “Fuck brah, I’m so happy you’re HAPPY.” That was before he started crying.

Over the din, Blaine heard a voice at his left. “Yo, he has got to know that’s not what sonnet one-sixteen means. I’m sorry, but the whole thing is about how love is wack and keeps changing. Nothing stays the same forever. It’s not exactly romantic.”

“Nursey, I swear to god, this is NOT THE TIME—”

From his spot backstage, Kurt caught Blaine’s eye and shrugged happily as the theater descended into mayhem. Blaine knew how he felt. No, Kurt couldn’t deliver the rousing denouement that he’d envisioned, but he couldn’t complain. The sale was full and they’d sold everything but the shirts off their backs. The blogs and papers could say whatever they wanted the next day; it didn’t matter. Jack and Bitty were blissed out of their minds and the Young Players Shakespeare Theater would live to fight another day. If they’d ended up with a new favorite sport and a small herd of new friends/confusing acquaintances, well that was just a bonus. 

\---

For a few weeks, Jack and Bitty might have been public, but they weren’t exactly okay. Blaine saw the interviews before and after games where so-called reporters couldn’t stop asking about Jack’s sex life as if it was news. Sometimes Eric’s name made its way into hecklers’ mouths, loud enough to be heard on national television; those were the only times Jack ever seemed to notice the crowd.

It wasn’t much better for Bitty. He came into class worse off than the first day he fell asleep, with wild hair and dark rings under his eyes. On the worst days, Blaine let him sleep and the rest of the class ignored Bitty’s snoring so diligently Blaine was almost proud. On those days, Bitty usually showed up at the house, his arms full of baking supplies and his mouth full of apologies.

“Professor, I am so sorry it happened again. Some idiot from the Bruins picked a fight last night during the game and George said Jack was fine, but I had to wait until I could hear his voice. Then I get chirped for my trouble. I know it was silly. I know, but I didn’t have a choice.”

Then Bitty usually offered to make something, a new pie or sometimes a cake, to make up for the bother, and Blaine always let him. Not that Kurt or Blaine needed more sweets in the house, but the desperation in Bitty’s eyes made it clear that the baking wasn’t really for them. Bitty was usually more calm afterward, more centered, and Blaine counted that as a win. It was something and, slowly, it all got better.

Other players made the news doing things that were much less pleasant (or heartwarming) than finding a boyfriend, and the press lost interest in Jack and Bitty’s immensely boring love affair. Homosexuality might have been novel in theory, but _Deadspin_ could only publish so many stories about a couple that refused to talk about anything except baking and hockey. Frank Marcheck’s arrest for fighting a drunk mom at _Sea World_ was infinitely more interesting and, just like that, the attention trickled away. Weeks later, reporters still asked inappropriate questions and trolls still appeared in Bitty’s mentions on twitter, but both were vastly outnumbered by people who were simply, quietly, happy for them.

Blaine knew all about it, of course, because Bitty never stopped showing up at his door. Neither, for that matter, did the rest of the team. It wasn’t official or organized, but every few weeks Bitty texted to see if they were free and then the lot of them piled into Kurt and Blaine’s living room to watch whatever was handy. Usually, that meant hockey, but not always. Sometimes, Rans and Holster turned the visit into a movie night (“ _Princess Bride_. _Princess Bride_. _Princess Bride_.” “Nah, dude. We’re watching _Little Mermaid_ this time. Period. It’s been over a month, and I have needs.” “Fine, but I reserve the right to sing.” “Bro, _of course_. I’m not just here for Jodi Benson’s pipes.”). Once, they ate enough pie to feed an elementary school and cheered on the _Great British Bake-off_ finalists like they were fighting for the Stanley Cup. That was a really good day, but there were a lot of good days to choose from. Kurt and Blaine’s bona-fide “adult” friends found the enduring Samwell herd a little mystifying, especially when they started volunteering as assistants for Kurt’s plays, but neither of them really cared.

As a rule, Blaine still didn’t become friends with his students. He didn’t have much in common with most undergrads. Still, he had it from a good authority that it was important to find his people, and his rules never said anything about finding a great big, loud, hockey-loving family.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading! If you're feeling chatty, come say hello at marauder-in-warblerland.tumblr.com.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic features an accidental outing. The consequences are taken seriously within the context of the world, but let me know if you would like more details.


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